Welcome back to your weekly mining news recap, where we catch you up on some of the news you may have missed. This week’s headlines include first gold at Equinox’s Valentine mine and Abcourt’s Sleeping Giant mine, a plant upgrade for Artemis Gold’s Blackwater mine, and a planned meeting between Canada’s industry minister and the CEOs of Teck Resources and Anglo American. 

Newmont applied to voluntarily delist from the Toronto Stock Exchange this week, attributing the move to low trading volumes. The delisting is expected to take effect on Sept. 24. Newmont’s primary listing is the New York Stock Exchange, and it is also listed on exchanges in Australia and Papua New Guinea.  

In other Newmont news, the company sold its Coffee gold project in Yukon to Fuerte Metals for up to US$150 million, North of 60 Mining News reported. Newmont will receive US$10 million in cash and US$40 million in Fuerte shares on deal closing. The sale was part of a year-long divestment plan that saw Newmont shed eight assets, including the Éléonore mine in Quebec and the Musselwhite and Porcupine mines in Ontario, in an effort to focus in on “core” operations. Additionally, today Newmont completed the sale of 43 million common shares in Orla Mining, representing about a 13.3 per cent ownership stake in the company and totaling $605 million. 

Canada’s industry minister Mélanie Joly said she will meet with the CEOs of Anglo American and Teck Resources next week, Reuters reported. Anglo’s friendly acquisition of Teck needs federal approval, and Joly said the government wants to make sure “there would be a net benefit to Canada.” Last year, following Glencore’s purchase of Teck’s metallurgical coal business, the federal government raised the bar for foreign acquisitions of “important” Canadian critical minerals miners, saying it would only approve such deals “in the most exceptional of circumstances.” Related: The Globe and Mail reported Monday that Prime Minister Mark Carney told Anglo it would need to move its headquarters to Canada to get the green light on its acquisition. 

Speaking of Anglo American, the company finalized a US$5 billion deal with Chilean state-run miner Codelco to jointly operate their neighbouring copper mines, Reuters reported. The deal will bring together certain operations at Anglo’s Los Bronces and Codelco’s Andina mines, located in the Andes mountains in central Chile, and turn the joint operation into one of the top 10 producing copper mines globally. The companies estimated the arrangement would boost copper production by 120,000 tonnes per year and cut costs by about 15 per cent per tonne and could yield new production as early as 2030. 

FPX Nickel Corp. is getting $3.5 million from the federal government to advance its Baptiste nickel project in central B.C. The funding, through Natural Resources Canada’s Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, will cover 50 per cent of the cost for feasibility and baseline studies on the access road and electrical transmission line needed at Baptiste. FPX said it will collaborate with First Nations on the studies. 

As battery electric vehicles become more commonplace in underground mines, experts at Workplace Safety North’s Battery Electric Vehicle Safety in Mines Symposium stressed that miners need to better understand and mitigate their fire risk. Thermal runaway is a chain reaction inside a battery that increases temperatures and can ignite a fire. It can be caused by mechanical damage during transport, handling or operation, extreme heat or cold, manufacturing or assembly issues and other triggers. 

Equinox Gold made the first gold pour at its Valentine gold mine in Newfoundland and Labrador on Monday, Mining Technology reported. The milestone came ahead of schedule, according to Equinox CEO Darren Hall, as the site’s mill throughput averaged 47 per cent of its nameplate in the first 15 days of operation. He said the progress with commissioning Valentine’s process plant sets the mine up to reach nameplate capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year by the second quarter of 2026. 

Artemis Gold is planning to upgrade the process plant at its Blackwater mine in central B.C. to eight million tonnes per year by the fourth quarter of 2026, up from its current nameplate capacity of six million tonnes per year. The upgrade, which the company estimated will cost between $100 and $110 million, will include the addition of a 3.5-megawatt vertical mill to the current ball mill grinding circuit, an expanded leach circuit and two extra storage ponds, among other expansions. Artemis is currently developing a strategy to accelerate an even larger process plant expansion, to 12 million tonnes per year. 

Abcourt Mines has woken the Sleeping Giant, reporting first gold pour at the past-producing mine in Quebec’s Abitibi region after two months of development work, The Northern Miner reported. Abcourt said earlier this month it is currently ramping up milling activities, with a goal to operate the mill for 40 hours a week, processing 30 tonnes per hour, in the “coming months.”  

Vancouver-based EMP Metals has received the municipal and provincial permits to begin constructing and operating its Project Aurora lithium refining demonstration plant in southeast Saskatchewan, SaskToday reported. The plant is a joint venture between EMP and lithium refining and industrial wastewater treatment company Saltworks Technologies, with Saltworks designing and building the wellhead-connected plant and EMP providing the lithium brine from its Viewfield well. The plant will process brine into a purified and concentrated lithium chloride, which will be sent onto Saltworks’ conversion plant in Richmond, B.C. to be converted into lithium carbonate. 

A pilot project by the Canadian and Northwest Territories governments will use artificial intelligence and digital core scanning technologies to re-examine archived core samples, Ashley Fish-Robertson reported for the Sept/Oct issue of CIM Magazine. The project’s main aim is to identify high-potential critical mineral zones in the Slave Geological Province, a region seen as one of Canada’s most promising areas for lithium, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements. 

That’s all for this week. If you’ve got feedback, you can always reach us at editor@cim.org. If you’ve got something to add, why not join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram pages?